Quote Me

"The rich, the professional idlers, desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in today's art. And I, myself, since the advent of cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted, and satisfied the critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my head. The less they understood, the more they admired me! Through amusing myself with all these farces I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word.

Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown...I have understood my time, and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, more painful than it may seem, but at least, and at last, does have the merit of being honest."

-- Picasso, 1954, to Giovanni Papini

Soapbox

Deception and Art

Lately, I am filled with all sorts of half-baked, crackpot theories. This, I hope, is a relief for the crack-baked, half-pot theories that are pervasive on some blogs and the message boards around which I lurk. Actually, many of the blogs don’t impart much useful information or even ideas for thought. They are of the “today I blew my nose” and “there is a new movie in my town” or the “look I have nothing to say so I will continue to say it” ilk. The message boards, on the other hand, rate a whole other essay.

Today, I want talk a little more about this magic as art theory.

First, it is hard for me to go with this pretentious “art” idea. I must use the term for lack of a better one. The problem is that until the Victorian era, the idea of a low art and high art did not exist. The terms came to be as class distinctions grew during the 1800s.

America, for its first 60 years or so, acted as if it were a classless society; “all men created equal” and such. The reality was that there were two classes the haves and the have-nots. This became clearer during and after the civil war. The rich could buy their way out of the fighting. After the war, the nation had to deal with the new found equality of the Negroes.

Pre-war, pre-1900, magic was on the same level as all the other performance arts. As America, really the world, approached the turn-of-the-century, the elite of society split the arts into high and low. Let’s take the example of the ballet. I do not believe any now could argue that the ballet is considered a high art. Well you can argue, but you would be an idiot. Ballerinas, before the split, were considered whores because the showed their legs. Now, not so much.

As a notion, art, high or low, comes from the society and usually, but not always, the elite and the critics. It is a divisive term. It does not come from within.

Why, then, isn’t magic accepted by society as a high art? I have already explored several reasons. Answers to questions like these rarely have single easy answers. The answers are numerous and hard.

One of those answers may be the nature of magic itself will always hold it back.

Magic is the only art where deception is the goal. Further, the method of deception is the secret. I hear the argument already, “doesn’t acting require deception?” Well, no, you may believe some one in a character, but they are not trying to deceive you that they are that person.

As opposed to that, magic actively tries to deceive. We are defying the laws of nature, spitting in the eye of god. People don’t like when someone tries to deceive them. In most of art, the goal is to reveal truth. Magic’s goal is to deceive.

I hear the bizarrists and storytellers out there crying foul. Yes, you are trying to show some greater truths about the world in your stories. Yet, you use a deception to convey it. The deception undercuts the truth making it less trustworthy.

Neither do people like secrets being kept from them. We are answer-seeking people, so much so that we look for answers where there are no questions. We look for answers where there are none. We will not loosen our grip on wrong answers, any answers. My mother is a good example. As much as I try to teach her that psychics are not real, she wants to believe. When one is disproved, I hear, “well, I believe some people have powers, but those fakers on TV ruin it for the real ones.” She needs to have the answer of “greater powers” however wrong.

Could it be these components, inherent to magic, that will always hold it back?

Now we can look at two exceptions, each a different side of the magic coin. Several people e-mailed me a video of Jerome Murat from Dailymotion, a YouTube type of video web site. Find the video if you haven’t seen it. This is a very artistic act. I wonder, though, if the audience watching it realizes that it is a magic act or do they see it as a character performance and puppetry. Clearly, deception is not his goal, it is an artifice used to create the character. That artifice is well hidden, also. His secret is kept from the audience, but his deception is a special effect rather than a trick. The audience, entertained, sees art.

Time after time, the name Ricky Jay pops up in my store. When it does, the lay people who bring him up always express their admiration in terms of his high level of art. A while ago, I watched an old Ton Snyder show. The guests were a very young David Copperfield, a very hairy Ricky Jay, and a very Scarne, John Scarne. Ricky Jay performed this effect:

He displayed a shuffled deck and removed the ace through eight of clubs. He turned the deck face down, spread it out, and lost the selected cards in it. The deck was shuffled and cut repeatedly as he produced those cards. After the first eight productions, he continued to produce the balance of the clubs. At the end of which, he showed the deck not to be shuffled, but in numerical and suit order.

In this case, I believe his artifice is an open secret. He does not reveal how he does the trick, but he does show he is doing it with great skill. The audience sees his art in action. It is not hidden. In fact, the impossibility of it overwhelms the audience. He fools them with the trick, but does not keep the secret away from them. The audience, with great admiration for an artist’s technique, sees art.

Perhaps, having only one of the “bad” elements is acceptable to the audience, whereas two elements would be too much for an audience to bear. I am not sure myself.

Nevertheless, it is worth thinking about.

Although, not to the exception of working to be a better performer, that is.

Soapbox

I have been thinking, which, in and of itself, is not always a great thing. There is much written about how the bunglers of our art are bring us all down. If only we could eliminate the slag and magic will be respected as an art.

Do the other art forms have this problem?

Did Van Gogh think, “Gee, if we could only get Pierre to draw nudes instead of stick figures, this ‘painting thing’ will really take off?”

I thought I couldn’t speak about other art forms. Music, song, painting, sculpture, dance, acting, writing, do they have their own seedy underworld of half-assed deluded fiends? Well, the simple answer is yes.

I do not travel in these other worlds, having no other discernible talent other than lying, but like many I enjoy the car crash that is the auditions for American Idol. Just picture a Svengali deck in the hands of these crazed lunatics and you will begin to see the average magic club meeting. Now, we can extrapolate this to the other art forms with little argument.

So, where has magic gone wrong?

1) The truly bad of the other arts have a much more difficult time making money at what they do. Bad singers go to karaoke. Bad painters fill their garages with unsold paintings. Bad actors serve food. Bad sculptures make ashtrays. Bad magicians still seem to find work. Maybe not repeat work, or regular work, but work. The public really has a difficult time separating the good from the bad. Usually because they have little reference, I find, working at magic masters, that the last magician anyone ever saw is the best magician they ever saw. How we became generic in the public’s eyes is a whole other essay. Even Criss Angel is more often known as “that mindfreak guy” not as Criss Angel.

2) The other arts do not have the same kind artificial support systems. There are fewer SAMs and IBMs in the other arts. There are teachers and classes. I belong to a writer’s group. That is a place where we analyze each others’ work. It is not a place for fake back slapping and equalizing. The magic bunglers can network with the magic screw-ups and crossbreed with the magic clueless. Magic clubs give the terminally idiotic a chance to be on an equal footing with professionals, as do the conventions. Don’t get me started on this internet thing.

3) The comodization of magic hurts the art. Magic is sold everywhere and anywhere. When someone sells magic at a price reflecting its worth, we think they are ripping us off. Magicians are notoriously cheap. Magic is sold at cut-rate lack-of-respect prices. We, as human beings, rarely respect what is not gained through work. Magic sets proclaim a whole show in one box, just like the pros, with no work. While the painting kit does not profess that you will be opening a gallery any time soon.

4) True professionals, true artists in any art forms worry about themselves. Being an artist is ultimately an egotistical pursuit. Do you think Prince gives a flying fuck about some hack guitar player working the local VFW in Mokena? Is Brad Pitt staying up nights tapping out a blog on how bad of an actor Keanu Reeves is? Fill in your own artist from you favorite art as an example. Artists and Professionals worry about themselves and doing the best job they can. While many professionals do give classes, they do it in actual music and acting schools. They do not give away their art to any jerk with $25 and a mom to drive them to the magic shop.

Respect what you do and work to improve yourself is all the advice you will ever need to make the magician a respected artist.

Quote Me

"Planning to write is not writing.

Outlining...researching...talking to people

about what you're doing, none of that is writing.

Writing is writing."

--E. L. Doctorow